Inspiration 6.66

[LSPoorEeyorick]

And me? I'm holding out on reading until I've finished mine.

[lashbear]

"....and when they awoke... All of their old noses had grown back!!!"
[Girls shriek in terror]


...sorry, wrong movie.

BTW: Excellent writing, CP.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

BUMP

[Gemini Cricket]

Okay here it is.
I think I'm going to write a completely different second story about the same house...

--------------------------------------------

Evan Sent
by: GC

It was discouraging to Evan that despite not believing in ghosts while he was alive, that he was one now after death. He sat in an auditorium filled with fuzzy theatre chairs, his had a black stain on the seat. He knew that because he could see through his lap. Evan found himself surrounded by other spectral spectators, each one with the same confused look on their faces. Almost ever seat was occupied by one translucent ghost after another. Evan noticed a cluster of ghosts huddled together in one section of seats. Not one of them was older than eight years old. The chairs surrounded a small stage at the base of the auditorium where an old woman sat writing in a large leather bound book with a quill.

"Phil Nielsen." She croaked.

Phil, a balding man in his fifties, floated towards the old woman. He was amazed at how unnecessary his legs and feet now were.

"I don’t understand." He said. "I was eating a hot dog at Dodger Stadium and…"

"You choked and died. You landed face down near one of the concession stands. When they turned you over to administer CPR, you had popcorn stuck to your face."

Phil blinked blankly.

The woman handed him a pair of bronze colored keys.

"1519 Lancaster Avenue." She said. "It’s a house, there’s no apartment number."

"Huh?" Phil asked.

"Your new home. 3 bedrooms, not bad."

"Home?" He asked her.

"The post-living have to haunt for awhile before you move on." She said. "If you move on."

"Why wouldn't someone move on?" Phil asked.

"You ask too many questions." She said scratching her cheek with a crooked fingernail.

With that, a trapdoor opened beneath Phil and he floated into the ground. The door snapped shut again, just clearing Phil’s comb-over.

There was a collective murmuring throughout the auditorium.
A woman with a bad weave unleashed a yell, "When’s it my turn?! I’ve been waiting for hours."

"Where do you have to be, Mrs. Hughes?" the old woman asked.
A nearby ghost who laughed at just about everything… laughed.
The old woman surveyed the room and her glare silenced the remaining murmuring phantoms.

"Evan Moretti." She said scribbling something on her book.
As Evan floated to face the woman, he attempted a smile. He reached out a hand.

"Evan Moretti, ma’am. Glad to be here?" He joked.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him as he retracted his hand.
"No need for that. I see right through you."

The laughing ghost chuckled.

The woman exhaled through her nose.

"Ma’am?" Evan began.

The old woman surveyed her book once again.

"How did I die?"

"On stage." She answered him with a dash of laughter. "You died reciting Shakespeare and fell into a cardboard gazebo, center stage."

"I don’t believe it." Evan said. He tried to cover his eyes but he, of course, could see right though his hand. He saw the woman looking at him still.

"Well, you never believed in ghosts before today and ta-da!" She said waving her quill like a magic wand.

"Mr. Moretti, I don’t often do this but I’m giving you poltergeist status. That means you can pick up objects and throw them if you like." The old woman turned a page in her big book. "From what I gather, you’ve got quite the temper. That’s good."

The woman handed him a set of keys that swung from a leather tag.

"18 Lin Lane." She said.

"Why do I need keys?" Evan asked. "Can’t I just walk through the door?"

"Not the first time you enter a house. It needs to be unlocked, the house needs to grant you access."

"I see."

He grasped the keys. She did not release them.

"This one’s a personal job. This one’s for me." She said.

"What am I supposed to do? I…"

"You’ll know when you get there."

Evan took his place on the trap door.

"Some things can even scare a ghost, Mr. Moretti." She warned.
As Evan was lowered into the floor, he watched as the old woman winked at him.

[Gemini Cricket]

Evan Sent - Part 2

With the speed of blinking an eye, Evan found himself at the end of a long path leading to a house in need of a fresh coat of paint twenty years ago. It was dusk. The grounds of the house were littered with cardboard boxes, torn pieces of cloth and leaves from a tree he didn’t see. Stairs grew skyward from the long sidewalk and Evan hovered above them.

All that could be heard by Evan was the jingle of his keys and a cold wind that pushed fog across the ground. Evan stopped his ascent when abruptly, the wind ceased and everything around him became still. A noise drew his attention to a window above him. The face of a child with blackened eyes and a shaved head appeared in the window. A tiny hand rubbed small fingers across the glass, wiping away a thick coat of dust from the window. The little boy could see him. What he heard next was the sound of a rusty nail being raked across glass. He watched as the child etched an arrow shape into the window. Evan’s eyes followed where the arrow pointed, it led to the front door.

Before Evan could insert the key into the lock, the door threw itself open violently. No one helped it open. It was as if the house wanted him to come in without a doubt.

The door swung by one hinge and the seven locks it broke to open it dangled uselessly from its edges. Evan hovered into the house.
The interior of the house was dark, several inches of dust and dirt covered the floors and walls. A large portrait of a married couple hung lopsided on a wall nearby, the eyes and mouths of the happy couple were smeared with caked, maroon red blood. The stairs that led to the house’s second story was missing. A remnant of its frame splintered up from the floor like unearthed bones.

The adjacent room surrounded a grand dining table. Thick, black and formidable, the table was crowned with a mound of dirt. Several decaying bouquets of flowers sprung from the dirt. The cellophane of one flapped in a breeze that rifled its way past the collapsed front door.

The living room housed several more mounds of dirt. Each sitting next to each other like rows of festering bread loaves on a bakery shelf. Some were adorned with flowers, some were not. A shovel plunged into one of the mounds was a makeshift tombstone for one of the graves.

It was curious to Evan that the mounds were not long enough to house a full grown adult…

Suddenly, Evan remembered the child in the window. Surveying the graves again, he came to the realization that they were the graves of children.
Evan threw himself towards the stairs that lay broken and disheveled and floated up towards the second story. The walls of the entire second floor were removed. The entire area was littered with large boxes made from wooden doors, chain link or press board. The boxes were crudely constructed with over-sized nails protruding from all sides in awkward angles. He noticed that each one had a window to peer inside. He did just that to the nearest cell and saw a small child bound and gagged within.
Evan turned to see the child who looked at him in the window. The child was shackled to a radiator near the window. The boy looked at him happily.

Evan approached him.

"Don’t be scared." Evan said.

"We’re not." The boy whispered with cracked, chapped lips.

"I’m going to help you." Evan said.

The boy just smiled at him his tears turned to mud on his cheeks.
Evan watched as the child’s elated expression melted away like candle wax escaping a flame. Evan heard a car door slam. Evan hurried to the window and saw a police car driving down the sidewalk and stop suddenly where the stairs began.

A police officer, large, barrel-chested with sunken bloodshot eyes hurried up the stairs. He pulled a club from his belt.

"Thank goodness." Evan said.

The child hid his face in his dirt stained hands and screamed.

Evan turned towards the opening in the stairs and heard the policeman yell.

"Who the hell broke my fu cking door?!"

The world caved in on Evan as he heard the cop pull the door completely down from it’s lingering hinge.

Evan made his way to the first floor as the police man tried to hurriedly prop the door up in the battered doorway.

Evan crossed to the living room and pulled the shovel from the dirt. He turned to face the man in the doorway.

Evan slammed the shovel straight down into the floor at his feet. The man turned suddenly. He gasped and drew his gun, the door flopped to the floor. Firing two rounds at Evan, he smiled. When the bullets flew through Evan and planted themselves into a nearby wall, the smile faded.
The dark man turned just in time to see the door lift itself off of the ground and slam itself into the doorway with a thunder clap. His best attempts to pry it open it failed. An unearthly grip held the door in place.
The cop spun again to see Evan face to face with him.

"It’s playtime." Evan said as he swung the shovel’s sharp edge against the man’s neck.

Fin

[innerSpaceman]

I don't even know you.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

That was awesome!

[GusGus]

wow...

just.... wow

[lashbear]

[BarTopDancer]

Awesome Brad!